Fergana to Samarkand via Tashkent

September 11-12, 2016: Early Sunday morning we got back in the cars for the return drive to Tashkent. With the sun now behind us, I found the trip much more enjoyable, although while I admired the mountains the cotton fields were monotonous. Abdu told us that we would not eat lunch until after we checked back into the Shoddy Palace, but I was relieved and appreciative that after I said that I didn’t think I could last that long we stopped on the road for borscht and kebabs. The next day we would take the new fast train to Samarkand, and I was looking forward to the experience. I was less pleased by the instruction to pack an overnight bag so that our big bags could go by coach. My day pack was not really big enough to double as an overnight case, and I had just spent a month managing my own luggage on trains in the UK. But I did as I was told.

This was the afternoon we should have visited the Applied Arts Museum, but since it was shut for the holiday we rode the metro instead. The metro stations are one of Tashkent’s tourist attractions, and the decorations were indeed worth seeing, although without the grandeur of Moscow’s. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed. Instead I took quite a few photos of the martial statue of Timur on horseback, situated near the Hotel Uzbekistan. The hotel had been designed by Soviet architects and I found the lattice work facade intriguing. I wondered how the interplay of light and shadow looked from the inside.

But back to Timur, aka Tamerlane, the real reason we were in Amur Timur Maydoni, a rather empty plaza, from which Tashkent’s main streets radiated in all directions. While best known as a remarkably brutal conqueror and despoiler of cities in the mold of Chinggis Khan, he was also responsible for the revival and beautification of Samarkand. Born in 1336 he had become ruler of Transoxiana by 1370, and subsequently fought from Damascus to Moscow to Delhi, and was headed for China when he died in 1405. His particular signature was a pyramid of skulls, and as many as 17 million people may owe their deaths to him. While he must have been an astute general, his empire did not long outlast him.

The next morning my alarm went off at 5:45, and I was not best pleased after we arrived at the station and were all on board by 7:30, given that the train would not leave until 8:00. Uzbekistan’s new high speed trains used Spanish Talgo rolling stock, and we were in business class, the equivalent of Spanish Preferente, which I had experienced the year before. The seats were just as comfortable, but we traveled more slowly, and certainly less smoothly. The ride was too bumpy for me to write. We arrived at 10:05, and immediately headed for the Gur-Emir mausoleum and Timur’s sarcophagus, followed by a remarkable street of tombs and mausoleums. The mausoleums were stunning and deserve their own post.